"——"High Heal"! …"High Heal"! ...…Why… why isn't it working?!"
The vast cavern swallowed Eve's voice and threw it back as a broken echo.
Crystal-pale blue hair clung to her tear-soaked cheeks as she knelt over Reiji's body. Both hands glowed with pure white light again and again, pouring the strongest recovery magic she knew straight into the fist-sized hole punched through his chest.
"Why… why won't it close?!"
The wound didn't even twitch.
The light scattered uselessly, as if an invisible wall rejected every spell.
"Please… don't die… don't die, Reiji…!"
She cast it again.
And again.
And again.
The faint rise and fall of his chest (the last proof he was still clinging to life) grew shallower… then stopped entirely.
"――――――"
A sound like a cracked music box spilled from Eve's throat.
"Ah… ah…"
Her hands froze mid-glow. The light winked out.
"Someone… died because of me again…"
Memories she had buried four years ago surged up all at once.
The burned village.
The corpses of the knights who had protected her.
The villagers pointing at the small girl covered in ash and blood, screaming "Devil!" "Monster!" "It's all because of you!"
Back then she had been nothing but a cursed existence that brought death to everyone around her.
The same empty, mechanical despair from that day painted her face now.
"Ugh… uuu… hhh…"
She collapsed forward, clutching Reiji's blood-soaked body as if she could force her own heartbeat into him. Her forehead pressed against his silent chest; hot tears soaked the torn cloth.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I always… always get everyone killed…"
Her voice was no longer the proud, cheerful tone of the hero party's saintess.
It was the thin, cracked whimper of the gray, ash-covered girl from four years ago, the one the world had named "devil" instead of "human."
In the cold, dim cave, only the sound of her broken sobs remained.